College Football

James Franklin, Marcus Freeman set to make college football history, more to come

Updated Jan. 6, 2025 4:55 p.m. ET

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RJ Young

FOX Sports National College Football Analyst

A Black head coach will lead a team into an FBS national championship game for the first time ever this season. It's a guarantee, something unfamiliar to Black men across the country seeking opportunities to achieve what Marcus Freeman did at 35 and James Franklin at 42: become a head coach at an FBS program.

In 2019, Franklin, who has coached at Penn State for a decade now, told HBO 24/7 he wanted to achieve what no one else has since the sport first designated a national championship game as the best way to crown the top team in college football.

"I don't usually talk about this, but I want to be the first African-American football coach to win a[n] [FBS] national championship."

Franklin was just 12 years old when John Thompson became the first Black coach to lead a men's basketball team to a Division I national title in 1984 at Georgetown. That was 41 years ago — long enough that Freeman, nor I, could have seen it.

Franklin remembered what the sport looked like when Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith became the first pair of Black head coaches to lead teams to the Super Bowl in 2007. At the time, Franklin coordinated the offense for Ron Prince at Kansas State, one of just six Black head coaches in college football at the time. He remembers what that meant to him and his players, not only knowing the number, but each of their names: Sylvester Croom was at Mississippi State, Turner Gill was at Buffalo, Karl Dorrell was at UCLA, Randy Shannon was at Miami and Tyrone Willingham was at Notre Dame — out of 127 FBS head coaches.

Freeman was hired at Notre Dame 19 years after Willingham was in South Bend.

"It's a reminder that you are a representation for many others and many of our players that look the same way I do," Freeman said. "Your color shouldn't matter. The evidence of your work should. But it takes everybody."

Prince's Kansas State staff also featured current Atlanta Falcons head coach Raheem Morris, who is a godfather to Franklin's daughter, Shola. And, like Prince, Franklin eventually became a head coach at the Division I level when he accepted the job at Vanderbilt in 2011, and then was named the head coach at Penn State in 2014.

As it stands today, Vanderbilt (Franklin, Derek Mason), Stanford (Dennis Green, Willingham), Northwestern (Green, Francis Peay) and Colorado (Mel Tucker, Karl Dorrell, Deion Sanders) are the only programs to hire Black head coaches back-to-back. Colorado is the only program to perform that act three times in a row.

Still, the SEC doesn't feature a single Black head coach among its 16 teams and had never had a Black head coach before 2004, when Croom took over Mississippi State. Among the six programs to win a national title in the College Football Playoff era — Michigan, Georgia, Alabama, LSU, Clemson and Ohio State — only one has hired a Black head coach in its history, and Michigan did so for the first time in 2024, naming Sherrone Moore the school's 21st head football coach.

When more than half of the players in Division I college football are Black and just 16 of 134 FBS coaches are, Croom knows there is much more work to be done.

"No, there's definitely not enough progress," Croom told the Associated Press in 2022. "It's almost 20 years now, and the fact that we still have to have these conversations is disappointing, and it's frustrating. But at the same time, we still have to shed light on the situation as it is and find ways to change it because a lot of good people are being denied opportunities to coach and to lead and to motivate other people. 

"We want to get the best people. … And doors should not be closed to them simply because of the color of their skin."

The ACC features just two Black head football coaches in Syracuse's Fran Brown and Virginia's Tony Elliott. The Big Ten featured five in 2024 and is down to four in 2025: Franklin, Moore, Maryland coach Mike Locksley and UCLA coach DeShaun Foster. The Big 12 features just one in Sanders.

Franklin, whose mother is of white British descent and father is Black, is keenly aware of the moment before him and his counterpart in the Orange Bowl, Freeman, whose mother is of South Korean descent and father is Black. He knows this game, featuring two men as head coaches who are leading two blue-blood programs into the CFP semifinals, is a moment many will reflect upon and use to make decisions on hiring practices in the future.

"At the end of the day, you know, does this create opportunities for more guys to get in front of athletic directors? Does this create more opportunities for search firms? I hope so," Franklin said. "I think at the end of the day, you just want an opportunity and want to be able to earn it through your work and through your actions. So we'll see.

"I take a lot of pride in it. I think you guys know there's been some conversations in the past I kept private for a long time. But you know, I take a lot of pride in it. I'm honored. I'm honored to be able to compete against Marcus. I'm honored to be able to compete against Notre Dame."

History has shown the number of Black head football coaches will continue to increase. Since 2007, the sport has grown from seven Black head coaches in FBS to 16 — a significant increase. Until the percentage of players is equal to the coaches, we'll still see work that must be done. And every hire, every barrier, every first is and will be significant. My Grandmomme, Peggy Jean Connor, taught me that.

She sued the state of Mississippi for voting rights, and she won. She stood with Fannie Lou Hamer as she famously questioned America at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. She was the secretary-treasurer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and her name is recorded in the marriage records at Forrest County, Mississippi courthouse in the "colored" section.

I started at FOX Sports two years after she passed, but not before she told me she was sure I'd do so much to make her proud, that I would not squander the good work she and so many others had done to cut a path and make a way for us to be right where we are today.

I represent. Franklin represents. Freeman represents.

Pardon me while I burst into tears for them, for us, who will see history made on Thursday night with more to come.

RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast "The Number One College Football Show." Follow him at @RJ_Young.

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RJ Young